I've read on some blog recently (forgot which one it was) a post about favorite patterns and how much the sewists use them. One of the questions was whether every sewist had his/her favorite pattern and whether he/she had used it more than once.

I'd say I have a few favorite patterns that I use and exploit unmercifully and alter them until they're unrecognizable, so that every new garment I make using them looks different. A great example is the blouse pattern from BWOF 1/2008, #108. I didn't think this pattern would have numerous lives and countless incarnations when I first saw it. The first blouse I made using it is no longer in my possession, but it apparently started a flow if ideas, that still keep coming. The picture above displays 10 of many more blouses I made using the named pattern. The blouses displayed on the bottom were made for my mom (you can see on the bottom left corner that we have identical blouses, the only difference is in their sizes).

The question is - why do I stubbornly alter the pattern every time, instead of tracing a new, already prepared pattern from the magazine? Because I find it far more easier to alter the tried and trued pattern a bit than to go through the whole process of fitting and truing the model, in order to get a detail I could have made myself. Pattern manipulation give numerous options and makes the whole process much easier.

For example, the pinkish shirt from the picture (top right corner) was inspired by a shirt I saw in the Italian magazine La Mia Boutique. I traced the blouse pattern but was rather skeptical, so I compared it with the BWOF pattern. The pattern differences were more than obvious. I realized then that I could have made the gathers under the bust myself - the detail that appealed to me in the first place. The rest of the blouse - the back, shoulder seams placement, waist circumference, length, etc. - stayed unchanged, meaning that I knew exactly how the finished blouse would suit me. The trust I have in the tried and trued pattern is essential for quick and efficient sewing.